Fantasy Baseball Two-Start Pitchers Week 25

Quality starting pitching is essential to winning in fantasy baseball, especially in playoff time. The time has come to consider adding a starting pitcher who will make two starts in Week 24.

Pitchers who make two starts generally keep a lower ERA and bring in more strikeouts over the course of a weekly head-to-head matchup. Due to the prospect of picking up twice as many stats for the cost of one add/drop to your roster, two start pitchers take on even greater importance at this time of year.

Make sure you’re keeping tabs on the length of your championship round. In standard CBSSports leagues, this week is the final week. Some leagues with head-to-head matchups have championship rounds that go as long as two weeks (Yahoo!).

C.C. Sabathia of the Milwaukee Brewers, who is 15-8 with a 2.81 ERA, 225 strikeouts, and a 1.13 WHIP in 224.3 innings, tops our list of two-start fantasy baseball pitchers in Week 25. He takes the mound Tuesday versus the Chicago Cubs and Rich Harden, then Sunday versus the Reds and Bronson Arroyo. Other “must starts” in Week 25 include:

Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox

Roy Oswalt, Houston Astros

Dan Haren, Arizona Diamondbacks

Scott Kazmir, Tampa Bay Rays

Rich Harden, Chicago Cubs

The Sunday Special – A two-start pitcher who will impress you with his starts in Week 25:

Brandon Morrow, Seattle Mariners (2-3, 10 saves, 1.64 ERA, 59 strikeouts, 0.93 WHIP). After spending a good chunk of the season as Seattle’s closer, most fantasy baseball owners would be surprised to find out Morrow is actually a starter by trade. The young Mariners stud takes the mound Tuesday at Kansas City against Brandon Duckworth, then Sunday on the road against Oakland and Sean Gallagher. With those matchups, it’s hard to bet against a guy who’s ERA is currently under 2 with a WHIP under 1. Unlike most pitchers we highlight in the Sunday Special and Waiver Wire Wonder sections of this post, Morrow is actually a strikeout machine. In 49.3 innings of work, Morrow has 59 strikeouts! If you’re looking for a two-start pitching sleeper, Morrow is your guy this week.

Waiver Wire Wonder – A two-start pitcher owned in less than 40% of leagues to consider in Week 25:

Scott Lewis, Cleveland Indians (1-0, 0.00, 3, 0.38). Lewis was nasty in his MLB debut last week against Baltimore, and is taking the rotation spot of Anthony Reyes for the Indians down the stretch. He takes the mound Monday versus Minnesota and Kevin Slowey, then Sunday against Detroit and Kenny Rogers. We like to recommend young studs like Lewis in situations like this because many teams don’t have a solid scouting report on him (think Johnny Cueto earlier this season). We don’t even know anything about him except that he pitches twice next week and he dominated Baltimore last week.